By Aaron Zidichouski, Technical Officer at the Robotics Living Lab (RoLL), University of Manchester

I am a Technical Officer in the Robotics Living Lab (RoLL) at the Manchester Fashion Institute in Manchester Metropolitan University. I am from a Mechanical Engineering and R&D background, but my job is based in the Arts and Humanities department doing cross-disciplinary research.

My role at RoLL is to support research outputs with internal and external academic collaborators, maintain and run equipment and facilitate industrial collaborations with Textile Manufacturing SMEs and Microbusinesses. We design robotic tooling for textile and garment product assembly/disassembly, and upskilling garment designers and technicians to use robotic and semi-automated systems. We are working towards reshoring textile manufacturing to the UK and EU. RoLL is actively looking for project partners and collaborators in the robotics research space!

Thanks to UK RAS STEPS support and funding, I joined Imperial College London’s Technical Team for a placement. I spent a split week between the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery and Sir Micheal Uren Hub facilities while shadowing Fabio Tatti in his role as the Core Facility Manager in the Department of Bioengineering.

Fabio introduced me to the Technical Team at Hamlyn, including Elena Zattera, Ana Lucia Cruz Ruiz, Salzitsa Anastasova, and Nazia Bharde. I had the opportunity to dive into detail on how their work directly supports the amazing research at Hamlyn, and the wide variety of foci they cover; from endoscopic soft robotic development, to computer vision and surgical guidance, and nanofabrication/characterization equipment, they cover so many technical specialties! I learned strategies and operational approaches for how this handled on a day-to-day basis, which was extremely important for where RoLL is trying to develop to accommodate. Getting to speak with Marianne Knight (Head of Operations) and Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena (Co-Director) at Hamlyn gave me insight to how this organisation started, and what it took to grow into the important resource it is today.

At the Sir Micheal Uren Hub, Fabio introduced me to Ken Keating and Florent Seichepine who run the BioEng and nanofabrication facilities, respectively. I was introduced to the large team and infrastructure it takes to keep biology labs and cleanrooms running so that the high-impact researchers can do their work! Florent took me for my first cleanroom experience demoing the nanoscibe, and all the support systems that make up the equipment back-end. Communication and open doors seemed to be the key for these resources and teams to work effectively and handle potential issues pre-emptively.

Lastly, Fabio showed me the Multilimb Virtual Environment (MUVE) lab where I became a participant in a Human-machine interaction experiment for one of the graduate students. Fabio clearly facilitates many needs in the MUVE lab, but expressed how great it was to be involved in different specialisations; each one is a learning opportunity as a Facility Manager, and helps with continuous skill development, along with keeping the role interesting.

Overall, I had many small takeaways and questions answered for my job in RoLL and the possibilities of where being a Technical Officer can go. It was excellent to get a sense of where there might be blind spots for my lab as we move into the project support phase, have confirmation of what we are doing well, and open the door to potential collaborations with researchers and technicians at Imperial College. This was an important visit for me to build this connection, which will definitely lead to partnered work, mutual support in our individual areas of research and cross-over topics, and help the Robotics Living Lab navigate it’s future direction from the lessons shared by the folks at Imperial College London.